Friday, December 12, 2008

This is one of the rarest reel that I have and of course wasn't commercially released, it was made by someone. The reel was probably in origin a Maxell silver reel, one of the first designs, almost the same than the common 3 holes from Agfa and ReVox.

The reel presented here is painted in black but with a layer of bright varnish, so the final result is really cool. All the lettering is in gold colour, with the characteristical big "m" of maxell and the brand written too. Lettering is in both sides and placed three times in a 120º configuration.

Pictures worth more than one thousand words:

And here is a video with this reel used as take-up reel in a Teac X-2000R:

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Today I was working a Pioneer RT-707, putting some grease in the capstan motor and adjusting the fly wheel when both direction lamps burned. It's rare that both lamps burn at the same time, but I think that this happened because they were in their last hours, and after manipulated the deck, putting it up, down... etc, finally the filaments broke.

Fortunatelly I had some leds left at home, so I began to replace both direction lamps with leds. The voltage to the lamps is about 26VDC, so a balast resistor is needed in serial with each led. I used 5mm width leds, that enter perfectly in the hold.

In a first time I tried a 1.3Kohms. 1/4 watt. After testing, it got too hot, so I tried a 2.2 Kohms. and with more wattage. Tested that first one led with it and all was working well.

Here is the procedure I followed to change the direction lamps with leds.

1- Remove the deck cover. Four philips screws in each side and three more in the upper.

2- Remove the front panel. Two philips screws and three more in the bottom. Remove the pots knobs of MIC and LINE controls. Also the pinch control knob. To remove the front panel now, both pinch roller must be pushed up manually and with care, pull the panel.

3- Both direction lamps are in a small black socket. To remove it, unscrew the two philips screws.

Each lamp is inside his hole and can be removered simply pulling the lamp from their wires.

4- Solder the balast resistor to the cathode of the led (in the image is shown the first resistor that I tried). Use a simple tester to know which wire will go to the cathode and which one to the anode.

5- Put the led inside the original socket

6- Solder the wires to the led and the balast resistor

Here is another pic with the final balast resistor selected, 2.2 KOhms.

7- Solder the other direction led.

8- Test both direction leds.

9- Put some electric tape in the chasis where will be hold the leds socket, to make a dielectric layer so that nothing wrong happens if some wire of the new leds touch the bottom part of the socket once it has been put in its original place

10- Put the leds socket in its place with the two philips screws and test the work

Here is another video of the Grundig TS-1000 available in high quality playing back "Galactica OST" at 19 cms / 7.5 ips. The tape is a AGFA 468 and the reels are metal Scotch painted in blue. They look really cool.

Here is another video available in high quality (originally shot in 720P) showing the Tandberg TD 20A playing back "Badly Drawn Boy" at 19 cms / 7.5 ips, this time with ReVox black metal NAB hub adapters.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

This was the top of the line reel to reel deck made by Tandberg and can handle up to 10.5" reels . It was sold in two versions: 4 tracks and 2 tracks.

The 4 tracks version came with the standard domestic speeds: 9.5 cms / 3.75 ips and 19 cms / 7.5 ips, while the 2 tracks version came with the professional speeds: 19 cms / 7.5 ips and 38 cms / 15 ips.

Instead of the typical 3 motor design, this deck has 4 motors: one per each reel, one for the capstan and the last one for pinch roller engage. I think this deck was the only one made with this feature instead of the most typical design by solenoid.

But there are more odd things. For example, this deck doesn't have a PAUSE button. It's rare, but I think the explanation is the system used to engage the pinch roller.

Other odd is that isn't neccesary to press the record and play buttons at the same time, it's only needed to press the record button and the deck goes into the recording mode if at least one of the record switches are selected. When a record switch is on, the "stand by" led lights.

All transport functions are led lighted, even the "stop" and all leds are red.

There's one feature that it's curious: the "free" mode. When "stop" and "wind" buttons are pressed at the same time, the led with the "free" function lights. In that mode the brakes are released and both reels can be manipulated by hand without any friction.

If the "edit / cue" switch is on, the sound can be heared while the reels are manipulated by hand. To end the free mode, just press "stop" and the deck will tight the tape.

Bias adjustment can be done individually per each channel with two pots that are in the front face of the deck and there are individual pots for the input signals per channel (line 1 and line 2 / mic), mic attenuator and output signal.

Monday, September 29, 2008

As I explained in the previous entry, I had to fix a tension arm problem with my Teac X-2000R, so after fixing it, I shot this video showing some inside views of the deck and how the capstan belt changes its position depending on which play direction is selected.

This happens because the capstan wheels have two parts, one with a diameter bigger than the other, so that when the forward direction is selected, the belt accomodates the position where the right capstan wheel spins a little faster than the left one, and the opposite, when the reverse direction is selected, the left capstan wheel spins a little faster than the right capstan wheel.

Although my Teac X-2000R was almost mint, from the first moment the tension arms fluctuated when it was in play mode, both forward or reverse.

I swapped both tension arms guide rollers but the problem persisted.

I opened the deck trying to figure out which was the problem. The auto-tension system is basically the same as the one found in the Grundig TS-1000. Each tension arm has a small plate attached in the inside and passes near a photodetector so that when the tension arm is in the lower position, the motor power goes up, and when the arm goes to a higher position, the tension applied to the motor goes down.

Here is a video shot from the inside of the machine:

I tried to adjust the position of the photodetectors and even the trimmers that adjust the tension, but no luck, the problem still happening.

The tension arm axis is a screw that has springs. I realized that when I manipulated the screw, the height position of the tension arm varied. I adjusted this screw with the machine in play mode with a tape threaded so that I can watch the results in real time. I minimal adjustement was needed to watch the tension arm stops its oscillation.

In appearance, this was a rare failure, because most times whis happen is caused by old motors and/or poor lubricated rollers and arms, but in this case, both rollers are in perfect shape and the motors too.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

If you have bought a tape and resulted to be sticky, or a tape that you already had and is completly useless for you once you have made a copy of the content, maybe you have asked yourself how to remove the tape but keeping the reel for future use as take up reel or to be fulled with other tape.

The first step is to be sure that your tape has the sticky shed syndrome. I usually do this method:

Once is threaded by the tape path, press FF and if you note than after one minute, it goes slow, press RWD. If the tape travels very slow or even can't travel, then is a sticky tape:

Well, now how to do with the tape to trash it fast and keep the reel without having as a result a never ending spaguetti tape incident:

I use a NAB hub without flanges, just the hub, but to get at least the correct aligment position as if were with a flange, I use a CD as a separator.

Today I've had to open the deck to make some mechanical adjustements, so I shot this video where is shown both external and internal parts of it in detail together with all transport functions from both points of view.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Just another video showing a Pioneer RT-707spinning. Since I'm doing the videos with a photo camera and sometimes with a webcam, the sound is really bad, but at this time I'm unable to copy from the video camera to the computer, so until better news, both video and audio quality won't be as good as in the first videos, but I think the top quality is not the goal when the videos will be watched in YouTube.

This time with two ReVox 7" metal reels, one in blue and one in gold, spinning at 19cm/s - 7.5 ips that contains close shots so that every detail can be watched.

Friday, September 19, 2008

This a good collector's item that I found sometime ago in mint state, never used.

I think that this boxset was only released in open reel tape at the end of 70's, just after the theatrical release of the movie. Separatelly was released in vinyl too.

There are two tapes recorded at 7.5 ips - 19 cm/s in 4 track stereo configuration, plus a complete list of all components of the orchesta and an album with high quality pictures of the movie.

The sound quality is good in both tapes. The first tape contains the original soundtrack composed by John Williams and the second tape contains the story of Star Wars, that is basically the sound of the original movie, but with a narrator that conduces the story. The total running time of the story is about 50 minutes.